Victory!!

My 5 year old son has wanted to learn how to ride a bike without training wheels for a while now. He finally got over the fear and decided to try. Within only a few days he had mastered riding. He is so proud of himself as we are. He still needs a little guidance with riding with people and steering but he is well on his way. His new found freedom.

Nature Journaling with Photos

I love the whole idea of keeping a nature journal. I've seen my children's drawing ability grow as a result. I even started one of my own. That time spent together was rather fun - we would all gather around our 3 big tables (office type tables), pull out the special colored pencils and the special crayons and begin looking through field guides as to what we wanted to attempt to draw. Now I have branched off by trying to photo journal some of the spots that we have hiked around. I managed to get a few photos the other day at a park that unfortunately was a little disappointing. As far as trails go.

I managed to get this photo of a beautiful dragonfly. My son just loves to chase these around, hoping to capture one.

I always thought that lily pads in a pond only had white flower blossoms. Here I found some with yellow flowers of some kind.


And a few interesting things along the way in the woods. This ones a little blurry.

A sign of Intelligence

Today my oldest daughter Gabrielle got her first pair of glasses. They look quite good on her - make her look sophisticated and brainy. Her siblings were great about not teasing her. Maybe she'll let me post a picture some day soon.

The Never Ending Story

My 3rd child Natania has had a long list of ER visits, a couple of broken bones - the large toe on each foot, some minor things like asthma plus some huge things like growth hormone shots. She is the never ending story of health problems in our family. I guess every family has one child like this and for us, she is it. Just yesterday we found out another minor crisis - Osgood-Schlatter disease which to me really isn't a disease but more of a neusance. It is a knee ailment that occurs usually around age 10 in children that are very active for instance in running, basketball, soccer - sports that have alot of impact on your knee joint. And as the same time are going through growth spurts. It causes the tendons to somehow become over stretch in a way which leads to a large lump just under the knee cap. The worst of it is knowing that she is in daily pain just from being an active kid. She will need to ice her knee often to control the pain. I also ordered a special knee strap to see if that will help. Thank God she will out grow it. Once she gets to her mature height, the pain should stop.